The dwarven king explained that, had I not reached the 20th floor of the dungeon then he would not have given me the seal. Explaining that once a seal is removed, the ring is downgraded; and until the 20th dungeon floor can be cleared once again, there would not have been a slot yet upon the hammer (explaining why I had never noticed the housing for the upgrade before). So this implied that my father had been in the dungeon, or someone had worn the ring in the dungeon before me, assuming the first crest required that the 10th floor be reached. But then how did Chance acquire the first seal? I asked the dwarf king and he explained that the current human royalty were not of true royal blood, and that the last true human king had split the ring, and divided the crests among the other lords… He believed that the prophecy foretold a saviour, and not a destroyer…

  He continued on a long rant about his hopes for the prophecy and about the forces that seemed to be actively preventing unity among the kingdoms. Something about the fourth kingdom and the betrayal of the sky people. I finally had enough and struck the anvil.

  The first thing I noticed was the field hugging half of the workshop. And the second thing that I noticed was that Dash was gone, I looked around briefly and then left the workshop leaving Beth and her father behind in my workshop. Once outside I called for Dash and he came soaring around a corner from the direction of the royal coffers. After a quick reunion I brought him back into the workshop and continued my conversation with the king of the dwarves.

  After much discussion, and me revealing my quest to avenge Lady Darkrose, we began to discuss the concept for sending an envoy consisting of dwarves and human knights and squires back to Denisea. The king brilliantly recommended that I transport half of our troops within the pocket dimension. I attempted to leave Dash within my workshop, well there was now more than just a workshop within my royal heirloom. But Dash must have been afraid of losing me again, so she would exit the space behind me every time I would leave on my own; It got to be quite annoying while attempting to transport almost two dozen crewmen across the dimensional rift, but it motivated me to try striking the anvil without entering it, which produced a short-lived portal, very convenient.

  After a few days of preparation everything was ready to go. A few humans had decided to stay behind which made room for more dwarves; Both onboard the vessel we had arrived on, and within my royal space. Of course Dash refused to remain within my newly upgraded farmland, so she joined me aboard our vessel.

  We equipped the ship with a small forge so I was able to gain temporary access to the royal workshop, I’m just going to refer to it as Sanctuary. It took awhile to get used to the idea of time passing in my worksh… Sanctuary while I was gone. I suspected it would also take awhile to get used to time not stopping outside. It also took awhile to adjust to the idea of the environment within Sanctuary not changing; Striking an anvil on a boat and appearing in a giant cave was a little baffling. And I was warned not to deactivate my soul-home, lest I have every living being within ejected all at once. And also not to exit the portal myself, because it would close the temporary portal onboard the ship. Hence: One-way portal for everyone including myself.

  We sailed for a few days, crew cycling in and out of my workshop. Still, every time I left the workshop Dash would follow directly behind me. The trip was routine until one day everything went dark for a second, and when I looked up I saw the form of an adult dragon, and not some kind of lesser dragonkin, it was a dragon. I evacuated as many of the crew as I could, but the attacker tore the deck off the ship, sending half of the workshop into the water and the ocean below. The dragon threw men and dwarves overboard and began to transform into a man. “You murder my children and snatch my daughter?!” He shouted. I guess I should have seen it coming. Dash’s father had come for him… right, daughter; so her. I had already drawn my blade without even realising it, Luseal told me not to fight; But Dash’s father grabbed my sword in his hand and began twisting until it snapped. Before I could react he punched me in the stomach and blood sprayed from my mouth. I fell to the ground in a slump as that evil fuck drew a familiar weapon; he held the very blade Chance had used to slay the dragon’s mate. He held it back in both hands and thrusted it at me. I raised my arm instinctively and Luseal formed a shield. But it was useless, the weapon pierced clean through her and into my chest. It must have struck my heart, because just that moment I saw an angel. The man who had wounded me told me I would meet the same fate as the man who killed Dash’s mother. and began to return to his previous form. I swear I saw Dash and the angel attacking him before I lost consciousness.

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  That was when I woke up in a Crypt only to find I had no wounds, no pain, and no pulse. I stumbled to the entrance but the sunlight burned my flesh and that's when I realised, I was not dead, I was cursed; and Dash was nowhere to be found. So I gathered my broken katana and attempted to activate Luseal’s cloak to protect my skin from the sun, and nothing happened. I found she was not around my neck, in either cloak or pendant form. And found her lying nearby, a broken and unresponsive kite shield.

  I thought of Dash, and Lady Darkrose, and even Chance and I began to weep; As I did, a brightly glowing silhouette appeared with a woman's voice and she said her name was Fate, creator of Infinity and that I was the first of her chosen. She told me I had to wait in Denisea for the volcano to erupt and that there, I would meet the rest of the chosen ones. She said she had chosen us for a task and that the universe will face a foe in a few hundred years, she then fixed my katana & restored Luseal with a snap of her fingers and disappeared.

  Luseal explained how her soul energy had been completely consumed when she tried to stop Dash’s father from harming me. She said that her soul-spark was still bound to this artefact, but disembodied. She felt my soul nearby over the passing days. And that a strange soul had lingered nearby before leaving me to rest in this place.

  I soon discovered that I could no longer dream. Sleep would only bring a voice I could not understand to my thoughts. The rambling gibberish nearly drove me insane, and I stopped sleeping for months, but eventually when I would hide away from another bombardment of sunlight, I could hear the voice once again. I'm ashamed to admit and honestly tempted to lie about how long it took for me to catch onto the patterns…

  The voice spoke in an unfamiliar language and when I finally began to understand, It told me the true nature of what I had become: I was the host of an interdimensional alien symbiote that had devoured and replaced my heart. The voice revealed itself as my own symbiote, and the language it spoke as: vampiric. And before I could freak-the-fuck out, it also explained that I could still be killed, but also, I could now possibly live forever.

  Once I started to sleep again, I no longer dreamt, in my slumber I would instead communicate with the symbiote, but on a much deeper level then our typical interaction. The entity would show me symbols, teach me. It taught me to speak, read, and write the vampiric language and what’s more; I taught it. In my slumber I could feel its appendages, or tendrils, not just feel them, but guide them.

  I was able to learn about the life cycle of a vampire, or more accurately: that of a vampiric symbiote. The symbiote would fill the host’s blood with eggs and once consumed by a viable host the eggs would hatch into larva and find their way to the heart. Once the larvae reach the heart, they battle until only one larva remains, and then (after consuming its dead foes) it attaches itself to the heart and enters a state of torpor and waits. The larva waits for the host to die and then begins to gorge itself on the host's heart using the host's genetic material to form a compatible replacement for the heart. It then fills the body with a concoction of chemicals that reanimates dead tissue (but also combusts in direct sunlight), completing the cycle.

  So all I had to do to sire another vampire such as myself was feed my blood to a living being, and if the host was already dead or near death then they could return in just a few days. Alternatively, if someone were to consume my blood in a healthy state, they would not become a vampire until shortly after their death.

  I knew it must have had something to do with the blood cultists, so I decided to take another crack at the journal I had found with them. Unfortunately it was in my workshop, and I didn't have an access point.